Julie Maurin
(m)other
3 February to 12 March 2022
Broken wing or fractured limb - uncertain profile, shadow of its own form - the work of Julie Maurin gestures us into a zone of layered eclipse and unsettling liminality. Wildfires leave haunting scars on the landscape; toxic waste ground holds lasting artefacts of the abandoned and prohibited. Ordinary objects to those who left or abandoned them, but incomprehensible, suspect, even threatening, to those who find them.
Originally salvage, Maurin begins with an urgent foraging which mimics the preservation of what has been wilfully or inadvertently rejected and deserted. The discarded and forgotten - the off-cuts - the desiccated and damaged are reconfigured. There is the suggestion of the uncertain and evolving from the earth. Each sculptural combination is an unexpected restoration of another world in which surprise and joy are reflected in the reach it offers. Gravity and inspiration, extravagance and constraint, move us beyond the normal place of perception and control. Hybrid forms of male and female, human and animal, organic and synthetic, emerge.
Maurin searches for and uses a range of traditional and unexpected materials from broken jewellery and used clothing, domestic appliances, human appurtenances, dried relics of the intertidal, and used and broken children's toys. Perforated slate often establishes the structure while suggesting the horizontal and the vertical: the decoration of flooring and the sweeping flood, the upright measure of growth and lasting monument.
Julie Maurin (b. 1993 in Marseille, France) lives and works in London and received her MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art (London) in 2020. Recent solo exhibition include Soaking in Chemicals, Dungeon (Detroit, 2021). Selected group exhibitions include Nature Max, GIANT (Bournemouth, UK 2021), “Hope” is the thing with feathers, South Parade (London, 2021), Bless’ed Curse, Solo Show (Online 2021), TerrainVagues, Limbo Space (Geneva, 2021), Space Lapse, Royal Society of Sculptors (London 2021) and The days are just packed, The Pool (Istanbul, 2020).
I looked into your eyes, I thought that I could see A Whole New World, 2021-2022. Polyurethane foam, epoxy dough, aluminium powder, steel, human hair, found plastic tubing, porcupine hairs, strass earring, 290 x 166 x 67 cm
Gonna burn down like fire, 2021-2022. Epoxy resin, epoxy putty, plastic toys, eel jaw, fake nails, toy figurine, found plastic wing, prosthetic silicon, Roussillon pigments, butchers hooks, slate, 64 (L) x 55 (W) x 13 (L) cm
Break me, 2021. Epoxy resin, quartz polished crystal spheres, glass found object, silicone, plastic Barbie tail, shoes, butchers hooks, slate, 56 (L) x 55.5 (W) x 8 (D) cm
If you want my love try to unlock it, 2022. Epoxy resin, synthetic hair, plastic toys, slate, alligator skin, found porcelain bowl, butchers hooks, slate 60 x 30 x 15 cm
Last call, 2022. Epoxy resin, Synthetic hair, found porcelain bowl, found butterfly box, plastic Teckel skeleton, toys, butchers hooks, slate, 88 (L) x 52 (W) x (D) 16 cm
Use me, 2021. Epoxy resin, mica pigments, dried chicken feet, dried heron feet, synthetic hair, plastic figurines, broken necklace, butchers hooks, slate, 56.5 (L) x 47 (W) x 10 cm (D)
Photography: Corey Bartle-Sanderson